Everyone encounters idiots at their day jobs, whether it’s your coworkers, your customers or clients, especially your boss. I asked people for the most common annoying, obvious, murder-inducing questions they’re asked at their day jobs and some of them were… just… I’d rather just be broke and homeless.

Check them out below. And if you can top these spirit-killing BS questions with stories from your day job, please do.

1. “I do in-house graphic design work for an academic institution. People who are not designers tend to lean over my shoulder and ask me to ‘Move that there,’ and ‘Make that bigger,’ and ‘Try outlining this, and lighten that, and justify those.’ And then they ask me: ‘What do you think?’ I don’t tell them.”

3. “‘Scope creep’ as an architect. Like when you’re asked to design a shelf for the office that then turns into a shelf/window screening system that then turns into a shelf/window screen/cabinet door system and then eventually you’re designing some sort of parasite that infests the whole office.” — Sam

4. “While working as a tutor: (student hands me detailed hand-out from teacher detailing how the assignment should be done) ‘So… what do I do?’” — Angel

5. “I’m really an actor, but to pay the bills I’m a receptionist at a law firm. I get so many smug rich clients who come in and ask me, with a straight face, ‘Did you go to school for this?’ Yea, douche. I majored in Recepting with a minor in Phone Smile.” — Will

6. “I work as a talent sourcer for an insurance company and my hiring managers always send me keywords to search for, but the keywords are always so obvious. If I’m searching for a nurse they’re always like, ‘Have you tried using these words in your search? nurse, nursing, hospital, charts…’” — Annie

7. “I work in customer service for a website that sells beads and you would be SHOCKED at how often I’m asked ‘Do these beads have holes in them?’” — Savannah

8. “I bartend and we have a self-serve coffee station. At least once a week someone asks me to bring them coffee when I obviously have shit to do.”

9. “’Can you make something that will go viral?’”

10. “Working in retail and having to think of new! and creative! ways to get suckers to sign up for company credit cards.”

11. “People always ask whether I’m gay or not. Apparently it is so outlandish that a straight person would want to work toward equality and fairness for gay and lesbian couples that people are always surprised.” — Dylan, gay rights campaigner

12. “’Can you make the squiggly lines go away in that marked up document?’” — Mari, receptionist

13. “I live in LA where everybody wants to be an actor and I work in reality TV and everybody thinks reality TV is so easy. A good one I always get is when people pitch me their half brained stupid ideas: ‘omg im CRAZZZYYYYY… you should do a reality show about meeeeee.. like, my life is SOOO CRAZZZYYYYYY…’” — Patty

14. “I do admin work at a hospital and I hate it when fully qualified doctors/surgeons ask for help with fax machines or how to phone someone.” — Jay

15. “I do corporate strategy and I hate when I am asked to ‘provide more analysis’ because that basically means ‘Do it for me.’”

16. “‘We really need to research this on social media. So can you type in “__” and write down everything that comes up?’” — Tracey

17. “They essentially used me as the human equivalent of ‘Let Me Google That For You,’ asking me to ‘research’ all kinds of things, then present it in spreadsheet form (they wouldn’t even look at it in any other way). More often than not, they would ignore the info entirely and do something that would end up costing them a lot.”

18. “I work in a box office. My favorite is when people stop, read ‘X show is SOLD OUT,’ then point at the sign and ask, ‘Is it really sold out?’” — Elizabeth

19. “I make these girl galleries for the website and I frequently get asked, Hey, she has an OK amount of skin in this picture, is there any way she can show more boob though?” — Eitan

20. “Can you watch the front counter while I go rub one out in the bathroom?” — Cole, McDonald’s

I worked for a Australian state government in their climate change division. In the time of my employment, the leadership changed from centre-progressive to centre-conservative. As a result, we were constantly asked by the new government to refer to climate change not as “climate change” but “climatic variability”. The regularity with which we were asked to do this was heartbreaking.

http://mattbaume.com/ mattymatt

I read “I work in a box office” and for a second I was really charmed by that, because I thought she meant like in the episode of The Simpsons where they go to a factory that makes boxes.

princessmystery

Im a female working in a video game store- the most annoying questions i get asked are :- do you even play games?? (no aparently i just got the job by sheer luck!) Asking me out of work, how much will i get for this? ( aparently i know how much everything in the store costs off by heart!) And ooh! can i have your discount? (I DONT EVEN KNOW WHO YOU ARE!!)

John

I’m a United States Marine, and EVERYTIME someone learns that, one of two things come up. ‘Have you ever killed someone’ which is a very annoying question believe it or not, and ‘oh my cousins first boyfriend from high schools sisters plumber is a marine, do you know them?’ Um, no, I do not.